Another Company Quits Chamber of Commerce Over Climate Position

Thursday was another bad day for the US Chamber of Commerce, as New Mexico utility holding company PNM Resources resigned from the group over its stance against climate change legislation. PNM spokesperson Don Brown said the company sees climate change as "the most pressing environmental and economic issue of our time," and thus won't be renewing its membership in an organization that has raised doubts about whether global warming is man-made.

Their announcement comes less than a week after Pacific Gas & Electric, a major California utility, pulled out of the Chamber over concerns about the group's climate change policies.

PG&E and PNM are thus far the only two groups to formally resign over the Chamber's climate stance. Here's the statement from PNM:

Given that view, and a natural limit on both company time and resources, we have decided that we can be most productive by working with organizations that share our view on the need for thoughtful, reasonable climate change legislation and want to push that agenda forward in Congress. These organizations include the Edison Electric Institute, the association of shareholder-owned electric companies, and the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a group of businesses and environmental organizations of which we are a founding member.

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Kate Sheppard was a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau from 2009 to 2013. She is now a senior reporter and the energy and environment editor at The Huffington Post. She can be reached by email at kate (dot) sheppard (at) huffingtonpost (dot) com and you can follow her on Twitter @kate_sheppard.

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